stop spending your money

Look. The whole music-gear-industry crap is incredibly marketed towards getting you to buy gear you don't necessarily need. Is this not obvious? Software, reason, mpc, midi, logic, mac vs. pc, integration, prosumer crap, you need this, buy this, etc. So to figure it all out we get on the internet and figure out what other people think we should buy. Then we spend a bunch of money on stuff, hey it's fun, blah blah. It really makes sense, huh? Spend tons of money on stuff, your stuff will be great and the music industry is SO supportive of new ideas and new artists, right? Oh yeah sure, they'll give you the chance to develop as an artist, right. The music industry is really on your side.

Bullshit.

When I say tape, I mean friggin cassette tape, you unimaginative jackasses. Look at it this way, a twenty-four track 2" machine translates into a certain amount of tape space per track, am I wrong? So a good cassette deck w/1/4" tape translates into quite a lot of space for a stereo mix. Am I wrong again? Have you tried it and gone to the mastering house, or are you just imagining what they would say? Isn't the tape inside a cassette pretty much the same tape as is found on a 2" machine?

I've sent piece of crap mp3's to friends who actually own real studios direct off cassette and been told "holy crap that sounds good." I make money on music that I record with one crappy condenser mic and a borrowed tape deck. A fortune? Not yet. More than what most of you guys make? Yes.

If you want to have fun and spend money on tons of gear that would have gone "to the ladies" or whatever nonsense you're talking about, cool, but make sure you secure that job marketing soft drinks because your shit is either a hobby, a passing phase, or something no one cares about. Or maybe I'm wrong again - maybe it's a good strategy to find out what Just Blaze or whoever is using and buy all that expensive stuff. Yep, once you get the money and figure out how to work it all and get a sound and oh yeah, make something decent, I'm sure the trends in music will still be waiting there for you to just jump right in and make it happen.

I'm not writing this for people who consider themselves amateurs or hobbyists. I've worked with everything from the cheapest borrowed stuff to the fanciest studios with $30,000 mic collections. If you are really doing it with the big gear budget, more power to you, I've done it with API 325 preamps, the real ones with Jensen transformers using Soundelux mics, mpc integrated with logic and tons of sample sets, and I've done it with absolutely no gear at all save a borrowed cassette deck and cheap condenser.

Think to yourself, what happens when you limit your choices? Are you forced to be more creative or less creative? I mean, you can't hide behind shiny production (which, in prosumer land, means "overhyped sounding doo-doo") right? You better have something to say. I don't necessarily mean lyrics, folks. Stop being so literal.

Tell you what. I'll pick some little drum groove out of the thousands of things I have. I don't post songs on the internet really, because I think it's pretty dumb to post your stuff before you learn about music publishing, so someone tell me where a good place to post an mp3 is. I'll make an mp3 of some drums using my crappy old mp3 converter. Then I'll post it. You people do what you want, it's my stuff, but even if you use the mp3 sounds and convert, you'll get some drums that smoke your whole library of "big drum sound" sampled stuff.

Interested?

I'm going to be out of town for a couple of days. If some of you fools want to put your assumptions to the test, let it be known on this board. When I get back I'll post a little drums somewhere. Then we will compare budgets. I don't care how much gear you have.

My hands are my compressors and eq.

My other outboard gear (besides cassette deck) is pillows, blankets, and wood.

I use my own samples to occasionally spice things or make them more palatable for fools with money.



-Benjamin

sorry, mpc-tutor administrator or moderator. I did not mean to imply that people aren't buying and using good sounds. I know they are. My main point was that it is smart to assess your gear situation and your beliefs about what you need to get where you want to go.

What works for you, works for you. I'm just expressing an opinion.

and just to clarify, I did not mean that a cassette deck is the best tracking tool you can own. It CAN BE the best tracking tool you own for free or for $30.00.

The input control on certain early nineties cassette decks is pretty interesting...

Sorry if I offended. I work extremely hard and like to just express opinions. It's just internet stuff/whatever.

thanks

Benyamin wrote:
My hands are my compressors and eq.

My other outboard gear (besides cassette deck) is pillows, blankets, and wood.

Wow. I'm like most of y'all. Sh*t was simpler before I stepped up my gear game. I did mad good sh*t (in my opinion) with a 4 track, one of those gemini samplers, bullsh*t keyboard and a drum machine. Once I started making cheese I started buying sh*t as soon as they came out. 85% of the sh*t I bought I ended up selling and getting way less than what I paid for. Now I stick with my 2000 classic maxed (no 8's though) , 1 sound module with an Oxygen 8 keyboard, Roland vs-1680 and MAAAAAAAAD vinyl.

tanamo00420 wrote:

Benyamin wrote:
My hands are my compressors and eq.

My other outboard gear (besides cassette deck) is pillows, blankets, and wood.

okay, now i've been drinking all night, so allow me to elaborate a little more on what i meant by

well ben the bad news is you're making no fukking sense.

the good news is, i've been drinking all night, so i'm going to try to make sense of it.


i know what you're saying as far as buying too much shit, but the problem is not too much shit, but too much shit at one time. for example, when i buy a piece of gear, i learn every in and out of it, before even considering buying something else. learning too much stuff at one time can be overwhelming and intimidating, so a lot of people that buy all this shit end up saying **** it.

pay attention, i think this is what you should have said.
people would be much happier if they learned to use the gear they had, instead of buying new gear thinking it will make all their problems go away.


with that being said, who are you to tell us what we need and don't need? btw, i make a pretty good living at this, so don't assume i'm just some **** yahoo. I happen to like reason, it's IMO the best computer program on the market, why do i like it so much? well for one, because i can't karate chop beats like you obviously can, and for two i took the time to learn how to use it.

I for one will accept your challenge, and you can keep your drums, i've got my own

Tanamo,

First, if something makes no fukkin sense, it makes no sense to try to make sense out of it, even if you're drunk.

It does make sense, actually.

It's cool, understand, I'm not telling anyone what they should use. Plenty of my friends use reason with good results, whatever floats your boat.

Yes, my hands are my compressors and my eq. This is more complicated. I'm sorry, it is. The way you hit a real drum or a drum pad affects the frequency range of the sound being created. Unless you have full level on or whatever.

My point - if you are very sensitive about what you are doing, you can get results with expensive gear and complicated software configurations, or with practically nothing. To get results with nothing requires a much keener sense, not just learning how the gear works, but the narrow little sweet spots that take hours, months to figure out. And when you start uncovering new sweet spots in your gear, you really learn to engineer and create a sound.

Example - it took me two weeks to figure out how to properly record a keyboard part from the wurlitzer to the cassette deck. The wurlitzer is fidgety as hell, some keys are louder/more high endy than others.

After two weeks of playing with configurations between mackie levels, input levels on cassette, and wurlitzer volume, I finally got the right combo and sewed it all up by throwing on the D112. The D112 idea hit me cause I know it has the "disco smile" eq curve, kind of cut lows and jacked highs. But because the jacked highs are out of the frequency range of most of the wurlitzer, I knew it would level it out. What's the point? For two weeks I practiced the piano and mic placement, learned a ton more about a couple tools I've already been using for months/years. My piano game shot through the roof and now I have the ill 70's wurlitzer sound on lock on the cheap, mic placements marked on the floor and volumes written down.

This is a far better way, for me anyway, to improve as a musician (producer, whatever you call it) writer, engineer, everything, than spending time, money, research on the net, save for gear, hours sampling, etc. When I get paid for what I do, it works out better as well, cause I have the game down cold, studio expenses are so low, dirt cheap in fact, it actually becomes decent profit and not just more money for more gear. You know, I can take a little vacation with my lady. And during the process my skills improve - cause I'm working on playing and engineering, not software implementation and forum questions.

Again, it's just what works for me, it took me years to get to this point. And I try not to karate chop beats so much anymore, instead I play the drums, layer the bass, layer the whirly, and spice with samples, try to get the whole thing with no editing and minimal effects. This is very difficult because I am not good enough at all those instruments to knock everything out of the park on the first shot. But working at this stuff is where I spend my time, rather than thinking about gear.

but people do make other music too you know. its not only an ep, a bass, a drumkit and a vocalist wich makes music
whatever suits you. if you prefer to make your kind of music that way you do that. other people will go into other directions
All the things you say are common knowledge. Nothing new, only fancy stories wich everybody in the game of music should know

btw whats wrong with asking questions on forums?

Benyamin wrote:1. A good cassette deck is probably the best outboard and tracking tool you can own. Most of you have or can borrow it. Doesn't have to be too fancy.

2. This simplifies life quite a bit, as you can stop worrying so much about integrating reason into your whole mad scientist software dream and focus on making music that means something.

3. Learn to use a cassette deck, and learn to recognize gear hype for gear hype. Trying to improve? What's smarter, spending money or using what you have?

4. If you do not frighten yourself during your work, at least sometimes, then you aren't improving and you should quit and go market soft drinks somewhere.

5. Your studio environment reflects your life. If you are not interested in the world around you, and think that the true dream lies in locking yourself away in a castle filled with records, MPC's, and computers, then your music will be boring and you should quit and go market soft drinks somewhere.

I used the mpc for many years and think it's fine. And this is a post about studio environments.

When I started to read this post i wanted to laugh, but then I started to remember the days when there was no studio just a SM58 beta Microphone that Coolio threw out in the crowd when i was 17, of which they cut his set off cause the park closed at 10pm and De La Soul cut into his stage time so he got MAD!

Anyway back then all I had was a Mic, Sony & Marantz Tape Deck a Dual Turntable and a King Fisher Amp with a Mic socket. I used to buy instrumentals & record my vocals with the instrumentals playing to tape 1 then play to tape 2 with the backing vocals. Those days i made do..

I still have the Sony Tape Deck, its the first one ever made with DOLBY S had it for like nearly 10 years. Mic dont work no more been dropped to many times.

But i totally hear u on making the most of your environment, i do the same, before i go running out to buy suttin i might not need i see how i can do it with something I already have. The problem is most people have but dont know they can do with it or even know they have it.

Nice post man i see ya point.

edit, I also remember a old family friend gave me a PORTABLE SONY DAT MACHINE, i never knew what or how it worked...and never did till i stuck in a power supply without checking the polarity and fried it. I sent it to sony and they told me what it was for and said it was un-repairable.

The problem is most people have but dont know they can do with it or even know they have it.

that sums it up.

Benyamin wrote:When I say tape, I mean friggin cassette tape, you unimaginative jackasses. Look at it this way, a twenty-four track 2" machine translates into a certain amount of tape space per track, am I wrong? So a good cassette deck w/1/4" tape translates into quite a lot of space for a stereo mix. Am I wrong again? Have you tried it and gone to the mastering house, or are you just imagining what they would say? Isn't the tape inside a cassette pretty much the same tape as is found on a 2" machine?

Well it's both analog tape but that's where the comparison stops. And you were talking about a cheap deck ("which you could probably borrow"), and not about a Nakamichi Dragon or other high-end cassette deck. If you think a cheap deck can sound even remotely similar to two tracks of a 24 track Studer, you are sadly mistaken.

As for your tape width comparison: 2 inches divided by 24 is 0.0833 inch per track. For cassette, it's 1/4 inch divided by 4 (two sides remember) is 0.0625. A small difference you might say, BUT cassette tape runs at 4.75cm per second, and a 2" reel-to-reel runs at up to 76 (or often 38 ) centimeters per second: SIXTEEN times the speed, meaning 16x the resolution. And that's BEFORE we start talking about the quality of the tape heads and transport mechanism, which make TONS of difference.

That said, I fully agree with you on the less-is-more approach, and most of us could indeed recorded to cassette without problems. I've heard 12"s and albums that were recorded to cassette, and it can sound really good, albeit not in the most hi-fi way. Of couse some serious mastering suites would laugh at you, but there are plenty of (budget) suites that still cater for cassete. I know Madlib released stuff that he recorded to cassete.

As for GAS (gear aquisition syndrome), we all suffer from it to some extent. I've bought more than I needed in the past. But you get over it, wise up, and learn how you like to work, and what you need to make that possible (and sell the rest).
I know I can make beats on just my SP303 that are just as good as anything I've ever done. Sometimes the 303 is all I use for days, and it makes me very happy to work with just that simple piece. But that doesn't mean I don't enjoy having a well-equipped studio as well.

Oh well, what do I care? I'm pretty much done buying gear anyway. After I get my new desk next week that is...

And my ¢2: Most sample cats like myself are better off spending money on records than on gear anyway. I know I'd rather work with one basic sampler and tons of vinyl, than with the greatest studio in the world and no vinyl.

lo-fi wrote:And my ¢2: Most sample cats like myself are better off spending money on records than on gear anyway. I know I'd rather work with one basic sampler and tons of vinyl, than with the greatest studio in the world and no vinyl.

That's what I'm talking about right there. Besides my PC, I got 2 tables, a mic, a control keyboard and my 2000XL (and vinyl). The only gear I'm still looking to buy is Serato scratchLIVE.

boy was i smashed last night

you need to learn to take a piss but you need to know how to piss as well bluehaze teached me that wahaha -drumtrack

that a good thing when a herb gets out of line, but not when a newcomer wants to drop some knowledge and he came in peace.

Calling out names gets you nowhere but more BS, hw let`s take an different tack shall we I don`t call you out by name drumtrack even when you are yelling at others who disagree with you or people skip your questions.

And I don`t know how you think or if I really hurt your feelings on the one crazy post but I don`t catch feelings over you though ha, ha, ha just a laugh to me.

Life is too short ha, ha, .

Back at hand whether it was the authors first post or not it sounds like the author was indeed very experienced in Music Making Process from his experience. I agree that he really said something very important not only for newcomers, but for the veterans as well.

But on the real I don`t think he was trying to change, school, or preach to anyone. Just giving some insight that doesn`t make him foolish. It makes him wise.

Every man makes his own decisions we may not always agree that is true especially what is the different between facts and fiction. However we could at less understand the others point of view even if we don`t agree.

If we disgree, then we disagree it still all good. I like what he said it is an enironment an way of thinking.



One can never change people that is a personal choice to make; however, one may reach people who are open and ready for change.

Keep posting and welcome to the forum.